This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn now to the global rise of mercenary armies, in particular, the Wagner Group, a Russian company founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, which has employed as many as 50,000 fighters who have been active in Ukraine, Syria, increasingly across Africa.
A new documentary by filmmaker Rick Rowley looks deeply at the Wagner Group and some of the journalists who exposed its activities. It’s called Hell’s Army. Let’s start with a clip from the film, in which a wealthy Central African businessman and politician discusses the Wagner Group’s role in supporting the regime when rebel forces attacked the capital city of Bangui in the Central African Republic in 2021. The clip begins with the dissident Russian reporter Katya Hakim.
KATYA HAKIM: Before leaving town, John is invited to meet a representative of the ruling regime, Fidèle Gouandjika, in his half-completed compound overlooking the capital.
FIDÈLE GOUANDJIKA: (translated) Nine floors.
JOHN LECHNER: (translated) Nine floors?
FIDÈLE GOUANDJIKA: (translated) It’s a pyramid, no? I am the Pharaoh of Bangui. It’s the Gouandjika dynasty! There it is. “I’m the king of the world!” Like Titanic.
JOHN LECHNER: (translated) Yes, like Titanic.
KATYA HAKIM: Gouandjika says that the regime here had been on the brink of collapse before Wagner forces arrived to save the capital from a rebel attack.
JOHN LECHNER: (translated) So, Wagner was there to defend the city.
FIDÈLE GOUANDJIKA: (translated) Yes, Wagner was there. They had helicopters, tanks. They did a good job of massacring them. War is not good. War is not good, is it? But I tell you, Wagner, they are very strong.
KATYA HAKIM: The ruling regime had embraced Wagner, and it had become something terrifying: mercenary army that kept authoritarian regimes in power, while it conquered oil fields and gold mines.
AMY GOODMAN: That was a clip from the new film Hell’s Army, which is having its North American premiere this afternoon in Washington, D.C. Rick Rowley will then hop on a plane and come here to Sheffield Live! to the Sheffield DocFest, where the film will premiere here.
We’re joined now by filmmaker Rick Rowley, Academy Award-nominated, four-time Emmy-winning director, just won an Emmy for his film on HBO Max called Critical Incident: Death at the Border.
And congratulations for that, Rick. I know you’re going to be here in Sheffield very soon, but right now you’re in D.C. Talk about Hell’s Army.
RICK ROWLEY: So, Hell’s Army, I mean, I’ve been making films about war for most of my life, because war reveals us. At its moral extremities, our deepest sicknesses become visible not just as individuals, but as a culture. And so, the return of mercenary armies to the battlefield after centuries of absence is more than just a change in military tactics. Democracies don’t need mercenaries. They’re what states turn to when war has become a tool of private greed. They debase soldiers and turn them into murderers. They debase the entire nation by the thugs and the gangsters who run it. And that’s not only a problem in Russia, these processes, the rise of authoritarianism and oligarchy. We’re seeing them right here in the United States and around the world. So, this film is a warning sign of the horrors that lie ahead on this road. Authoritarianism and oligarchy are closing in all around us, but I still think that we can choose a kind of a different path.
AMY GOODMAN: And remind us what the Wagner Group is, who Yevgeny Prigozhin was, and his fiery demise in 2023.
RICK ROWLEY: Yeah. Well, so, I’ve been tracking mercenaries since 2004, when I first crossed paths with them in Iraq. And, you know, Blackwater there, which was exposed by the brilliant reporter named Jeremy Scahill, was an inspiration to the Russian Ministry of Defense to develop its own mercenary capability. But when Wagner emerged from the shadows first in Syria, it was clear that they’d realized an ideal, a terrifying ideal, that Blackwater and all of its descendants had failed to do. Wagner put 30,000 soldiers in the field at one time. They were larger than most of the armies in Europe. They’re the first private company to conquer a European city in 500 years. And, you know, as you saw in that clip, in countries like the Central African Republic, they’re propping up autocrats in order — while they seize oil fields and gold mines. I mean, when war is turned into a tool of private greed, I mean, it’s a — it’s a business that is always looking for areas to expand. And, you know, it’s a scourge that should have been banned from the battlefield centuries ago.
So, Prigozhin’s story and Wagner’s story is incredible. It’s like — it’s like a parallel to the Hollywood film Scarface. Prigozhin was in a Soviet penal colony and was released into the chaos of post-Soviet St. Petersburg. He was a petty thug and a gangster who ran — probably ran money-laundering outfits, you know, casinos and restaurants, linked to other figures in the underworld in St. Petersburg, who happened to cross paths with a rising star there, a former KGB agent named Vladimir Putin. And when Putin became president, Prigozhin became a billionaire. He was made a mini-oligarch in charge of catering contracts for the state. But he really found his own — came into his own when the first Russian operations in Ukraine happened back in 2014. Then Wagner emerged as a mercenary that spread from there, first to Syria, then to several countries in Africa, and then came back to Ukraine during the full-scale invasion.
He was — you know, Denis Korotkov, who’s one of our main investigators and characters, and who has unprecedented — he was the first person to report of the existence of Wagner and has unprecedented access inside, looks on Prigozhin as sort of this pathetic figure. He’s violent and, you know, vindictive, but he’s also desperately eager to please Putin and his inner circle. But he was always just on the outside of it. Wagner was his chance to become a real player in the halls of power in the Kremlin. But he rose too high, and so other members of Putin’s inner circle in the Ministry of Defense and the army saw a need to take over Wagner during the war in Ukraine, after their success in Bakhmut. They were going to turn Wagner into just another part of the Ministry of Defense apparatus.
Prigozhin knew that that was — that was the end of his career, and potentially a death sentence, so he staged one of the most insane uprisings in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. A column of tanks headed to Moscow. They shot down helicopters and planes. He called that off and ended up dying in a plane crash, or his body was discovered after a plane crash, a flight between Moscow and St. Petersburg, very clearly, you know, if not ordered, at least authorized by Putin. But the important thing here is we —
AMY GOODMAN: And we just have a minute, Rick. Very, very —
RICK ROWLEY: OK.
AMY GOODMAN: Very, very quickly. We just have a minute. You followed two reporters in where Wagner Group operates now. How dangerous it is even to cover them?
RICK ROWLEY: Yeah, exactly. So, Denis Korotkov, who’s the first reporter to cover Wagner, he introduced us to Katya Hakim and to the whole team at the Dossier Center in the U.K., an amazing group of investigators, who allowed — gave us, you know, access to the frontlines, to leaked documents from inside and to insiders. During the course of investigating Wagner Group, three of their colleagues were murdered in the Central African Republic trying to expose Wagner’s presence near a Russian gold mine or a Wagner gold mine. So, the stakes are incredibly high for them. And, you know, this film began as chasing the world’s most feared mercenary army around the world, but in the end we realized that he could be killed —
AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.
RICK ROWLEY: — the leader of this army could be killed, but its model continues. Around the world, oligarchs are turning to mercenary armies. And, you know, it’s a scourge that needs to be stopped.
AMY GOODMAN: And we will continue to cover it, Rick Rowley, Academy Award-nominated, four-time Emmy-winning director of the new film Hell’s Army, having its North American premiere at DC/DOX in Washington, D.C., then coming here to Sheffield Live!
Yes, we’ve been broadcasting from the studios of Sheffield Live! and Sheffield community TV and radio. Special thanks to Steve Buckley and Sangita Basudev and to Jeff Williams and Abigail Turner. I’m here at Sheffield Live! for the release of DC/DOX — for the release of Steal This Story, Please!, then on to Belfast. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.
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